Mefitis
Mefitis (or Mephitis ) is the Italian goddess of sulphurous and other foul-smelling vapors.
According to Pliny the Elder (nat. 2, 208) their cult was mainly to be found in volcanic areas with the Oscars . But also in Rome there was a holy grove of this goddess and a Mefitis shrine on the Esquiline , as for example Varro (ling. 5,49) attests. The Esquiline served as a burial place for a long time; possibly because of this the air was actually unhealthy there before Maecenas had his gardens built there. Towards the end of the 1st century BC The deity was forgotten. Only her name was still used as an appellative , as Virgil (Aen. 7, 84) attests .
A deity of sulphurous vapors should not be viewed in an exclusively negative way, as sulfur was viewed both as a remedy for skin diseases and as a fertility-enhancing agent. In the times when Venus was viewed not only as the goddess of beauty but also of health - which is likely to have been the case in the fourth and third centuries BC - a connection between Venus and Mefitis was probably seen; perhaps Mefitis can be seen as the predecessor of the "health goddess" Venus.
literature
- Raffaele Mambella: Mephitis . In: Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (LIMC). Volume VI, Zurich / Munich 1992, pp. 400–402.
- Ernst Marbach: Maphitis. In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume XV, 1, Stuttgart 1931, Col. 118 f.
- Attilio Mastrocinque: Mefitis. In: The New Pauly (DNP). Volume 7, Metzler, Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-476-01477-0 , Sp. 1131.
- Rudolf Peter: Mefitis . In: Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Hrsg.): Detailed lexicon of Greek and Roman mythology . Volume 2.2, Leipzig 1897, Col. 2519-2521 ( digitized version ).